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Democrats adrift without leadership

Where, oh, where is the leader of the loyal Democratic opposition these days?

Don’t ask former President Barack Obama. He’s out surfing. Hillary Clinton? Hiking in the woods. CNN’s Anderson Cooper recently asked House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who the leader of the Democratic Party is and she, oddly, pointed to both Obama and Clinton, both officially out of office. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer isn’t exactly rising to the occasion, either. He’s saying the same old things about Republicans—they’re all “extreme” and too far out of the “mainstream”—that he’s being saying for the past decade. Oh, and that new Democratic National Committee Chairman, Tom Perez? He’s already on the GOP’s “do not take seriously” list, unapologetically uttering nonsense like Republicans “don’t give a sh*t about people” and supporting the notion that President Donald Trump didn’t actually win the election.

No wonder the Trump White House considers, as top adviser Steve Bannon said, the media to be the “opposition party.” The Democrats, writ large, aren’t worthy opponents. For those making purely political calculations, it makes far more sense for team Trump to attack the members of the media, who represent a serious threat to Trump’s influence and power, than the Democrats, who appear to be no threat at all.

The only thing standing between Trump and his agenda, whatever that is, is the media. Just look at how terribly the Democrats have handled the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. Spurred on by their progressive base to “resist” anything and everything Trump does, the Senate Democrats made a huge strategic error in choosing to filibuster the appointment. Not over any specific policy reason, mind you. Mainly because the seat was, in their words, “stolen.”

But the Republicans didn’t steal anything; that seat was in the hands of the American people the whole time. The Democrats, with their silly “stolen seat” rhetoric, pretended the GOP didn’t make the open Supreme Court seat a major voting issue. As a candidate, Trump even took the unprecedented step of producing a public list of names he would choose from to help bring those voters to his side, persuading many skeptical Republican voters to ultimately support him. Clinton never did anything like that. She, like everyone else, thought she had the race, and the Supreme Court, in the bag.

So let’s be honest. Merrick Garland’s seat wasn’t “stolen”; the Democrats lost it in the election....
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There is much more.

Carpenter is returning the focus on the Democrats' problems where they belong. Her point about the media is valid, but it also points out how their reliance on a partisan media has actually weakened the Democrat party.

Both the Senate Republicans and Trump made it an issue in the election and they won on it

"It continues. Have seen gunships firing and heard much activity in the last few hours."...
The Iraqi claim is plausible. It is just the kind of thing that could be expected from ISIS forces. ISIS is in a desperate fight and appears willing to pull down all those around them as they lose.

Some injuries were reported and more than a dozen people were arrested after opposing sides clashed at dueling pro- and anti-Trump rallies, Berkeley, Calif., police said.
The liberals engage in projection by calling Trump supporters fascists, when it is in fact, their supporters who are sparking the violence in Califonia. There is a strain of intolerance for other points of view that is enforced by people dressed in black and their faces covered. They physically attack Trump supporters or other conservatives. These people may wear black but the are the Brownshirts of liberal fascism.

Fuel Fix:
OPEC producers took another 153,000 barrels a day off the market in March as part of its bid to drain the world’s oil glut.

In the cartel’s monthly report released Wednesday, independent sources reported the group of oil-producing countries has cut output by 1.1 million barrels a day since December.

Last month, Libya’s output dropped by nearly 9 percent, and production edged lower in the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iran, Angola and other countries. Saudi Arabia raised production by 41,000 barrels a day.

That effort has pushed oil prices above $50 a barrel in recent months, breathing life into U.S. oil patches like the Permian Basin. U.S. crude rose 16 cents on Wednesday to $53.56 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, as traders reacted to media reports that Saudi Arabia, the cartel’s de facto leader, wants to see OPEC continue production cuts into the second half of this year.

But even as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries works to slow…